The Chichilnisky criterion is an explicit social welfare function that satisfies compelling conditions of intergenerational equity. However, it is time inconsistent and has no optimal solution in the Ramsey model. By investigating stationary Markov equilibria in the game that generations with...

Kolmogorov's extension theorem provides a natural mapping from the space of coherent hierarchies of an agent's first-order, second- order, etc. beliefs to the space of probability measures over the exogenous parameters and the other agents' belief hierarchies. Mertens and Zamir (1985) showed...

We introduce a simple game-theoretical model that captures the main aspects of the repeated interaction between an issuer and a credit-rating agency. It involves up-front payments of issuer-fees and direct publication of requested ratings. Due to pecuniary injuries for untruthful ratings, the...

Dams are essential for water storage and hydropower generation, but change river flow patterns and endanger local environments. Dam projects may further exacerbate already existing problems in trans-boundary rivers. We consider three scenarios of institutional factors: (1) each country pursues...

This paper develops a methodology for characterizing expected revenue from auctions when bidders' types come from an arbitrary distribution. In particular, types may be multidimensional, and there may be mass points in the distribution. One application extends existing revenue equivalence...

Human utility embodies a number of seemingly irrational aspects. The leading example in this paper is that utilities often depend on the presence of salient unchosen alternatives. Our focus is to understand <i>why</i> an evolutionary process might optimally lead to such seemingly dysfunctional features...

We define and analyze a "strategic topology'' on types in the Harsanyi-Mertens-Zamir universal type space, where two types are close if their strategic behavior is similar in all strategic situations. For a fixed game and action define the distance between a pair of types as the difference...

This paper proposes the solution concept of interim correlated rationalizability, and shows that all types that have the same hierarchies of beliefs have the same set of interim-correlated-rationalizable outcomes. This solution concept characterizes common certainty of rationality in the...

This paper extends Savage's subjective approach to probability and utility from decision problems under exogenous uncertainty to choice in strategic environments. Interactive uncertainty is modeled both explicitly, using hierarchies of preference relations, the analogue of beliefs hierarchies,...